The best option illusion in self and social assessment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15411545 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Dunning (0000-0002-4565-1208, University of Michigan, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 349-362 |
| Publication date | 2018-04-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Self and Identity (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1529-8868 • E-ISSN: 1529-8876 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/15298868.2018.1465460 |
| OpenAlex | W2801612976 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 71 |
I discuss the best option illusion, the tendency for people to select what they believe is the most reasonable option when solving problems or deciding on a course of action. Such a strategy is straightforward, sensible and difficult to quibble with, but occasionally the seemingly best option turns out to be anything but—leading to systematic errors and problems that must be identified, addressed, and managed. Specifically, people are more likely to be surprised in a negative direction than a positive one, give themselves positive credit for wrong answers, and stick to their answers far more than they should after exposure to contrary evidence. In self-judgment, the illusion leads to the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people fail to recognize their own incompetence. In social judgment, it leads to the Cassandra quandary, in which people fail to identify when another person's competence exceeds their own
Action (physics · Cognitive psychology · Competence (human resources · Illusion · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology
Advice taking and decision-making
Overcoming Algorithm Aversion
Advice Taking in Decision Making
Calibration of probabilities
Why the unskilled are unaware
How Many Words Do We Know? Practical Estimates of Vocabulary Size Dependent on Word Definition, the Degree of Language Input and the Participant’s Age
Simple models or simple processes? Some research on clinical judgments.
Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence
The Dunning–Kruger Effect
Common-sense models of illness
Clinical Versus Actuarial Judgment
Clinical versus mechanical prediction
A Newer Look
Flawed Self-Assessment
Taking Advice
Believing what we do not believe
Receiving other people’s advice
Ambiguity and Self-Evaluation
Judgemental adjustment of initial forecasts
The American Soldier-An Expository Review
Unskilled and unaware--but why? A reply to Krueger and Mueller (2002)
How unaware are the unskilled? Empirical tests of the “signal extraction” counterexplanation for the Dunning–Kruger effect in self-evaluation of performance
Unskilled and unaware of it
Overconfidence among beginners
Reasoning about others' reasoning
When self-perceptions of expertise increase closed-minded cognition
The “false consensus effect”
What you don’t know
Self-serving prototypes of social categories
How chronic self-views influence (and mislead) self-assessments of task performance
Unskilled, unaware, or both? The better-than-average heuristic and statistical regression predict errors in estimates of own performance
How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance
Perseverance of social theories
The hobgoblin of consistency
Ambiguity and self-evaluation
Idiosyncratic trait definitions
Hypocognition
Rationalization in a Reasoning Task
Anomalies
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,13 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2018 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |